OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #878025
SEVERED,BELT,WORK RULES,CLEANING,THUMB,LOCKOUT,CLOGGED,AUGER,PULLEY
Event description
Employee's thumb amputated by auger pulley and belt
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was drying beans. A pulley and belt-driven screw auger, which remove rsonsburg Rescue Squad responded to the scene and transported Employee #1 by amb ulance to Peninsula General Hospital in Salisbury, MD. He was later flown to Uni on Memorial Hospital in Baltimore, MD, where his thumb was reattached. s trash such as weed seeds, sticks, etc., had become clogged. In order to remove this stoppage, the employee shut off electrical power and removed the guard tha t protected the pulleys and belts that drive the auger. He began to manually mov e the belts in the opposite direction in order to relieve pressure. A coworker r estored electrical power to the controlling motor before Employee #1's hands wer e clear of the equipment. The pulleys and belts actuated and severed the thumb f rom his right hand. Although the company has a lockout policy that requires the use of a padlock, this policy was not in use during the time of the accident. Pa
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 46 M
- Nature of injury
- 1
- Part of body
- 10
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 26
- Occupation code
- 779
- Human factor
- 14
- Environmental factor
- 1
- Task assigned
- 1
Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.